FOAK: Private Med. Insurance

Now there I would agree with you. However, the purchaser-provider
split 15 years ago did a lot of good at the time, and would be
difficult to reverse.

 

*ding*

People are willing to to pay out of pocket for MRI scans when they could
have something wrong with them. It's worth the cost to not have months or
weeks of wondering whether you'll go blind or whatever, so I don't think
having to go in at silly o'clock is a massive hardship.

 

That seems to be the situtation with absolutely everything. People are quite
happy to fund the construction of something, but never the running of it.
Which of course means the initial investment is totally lost within a year
or two for some things.

 

Now while I understand that engineering projects are totally different
to NHS projects (one is expected to run within budget and one isn't)
surely the trusts work out how much money is needed and then pass that
information on to the government who then decide how much to allocate
to said projects?

If I'm correct in my first assumption then surely once the amount
allocated has been decided the government don't just say "here's some
cash, go and spend it", they tell the trust where the money has to go
and if the projects go to shit then it's down to the trust for either
getting their initial figures wrong or for using the wrong staff to
implement those projects.

 

You'd think so wouldn't you. Doesn't always happen in practice. There
doesn't seem to be a lot of joined up thinking going on in health & social
care. I could provide a list but if you want to get some details just go to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society

 

Yep. Except that Foundation Trusts (i.e. most of the big hospitals)
use cash surpluses and/or borrow money in order to fund capital
projects. The government doesn't give them anything.

Yep. Although some hospitals have been known to be "flexible" in
using, and accounting for, funds.